Face/Off (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
by John Woo
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon, Joan Allen, John Travolta, Nicolas CageDirector: John Woo
Brand: TRAVOLTA,JOHN
Producer: Barrie M. Osborne
Producer: Christopher Godsick
Producer: David Permut
Producer: Jeff Levine
Producer: Jonathan D. Krane
Writer: Michael Colleary
Writer: Mike Werb
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1 EX; Latin (Original Language); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 138 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of Face/Off (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: 4.5; wow, an action movie with heart?
Summary: 5 Stars
When it comes down to action movies, a lot of them are impressive visually and filled with cool set pieces yet a lot of them seem to be emotionally inert. It's as if they write the action scenes first and then decide to just connect them with the flimsiest of plots and barely any character development at all - or at least poorly-handled development anyway. One of the few successful ones at combining drama and action is Face/Off, directed by John Woo who did Mission:Impossible 2 but is mainly known for doing A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled. It's a cool insight in taking on personas we don't want to do but the freedom they can allow.
FBI Agent Sean Archer has been on a long hunt for Castor Troy, a known terrorist who's responsible for accidentally kiling Sean's son Michael in a failed assassination attempt. Well after successfully capturing Troy and his brother Pollux but leaving Castor in a coma, Sean receives grim news: a bomb is hidden somewhere in Los Angeles and is set to go off soon so Sean decides to go through an odd procedure: borrow Castor's face through advanced surgery and get the location of the bomb from Pollux in prison. But things don't go as planned as, even though he gets the location, the real Castor awakes, sans face, and takes Sean's. Now both are dealing with new people and the problems or the advantages they can create and both have to figure out how to kill the other and get their faces and lives back.
John Woo has been known recently for being an almost easier-accepted version of Michael Bay. Both make action movies yet don't really have the dramatic impact of anything. Of course Woo has done A Better Tomorrow, the Killer and Hard Boiled so he's got that going for him but Face/Off is probably his best Hollywood movie. Not only is it visually exciting but also has great character moments and interesting ideas. How would we react if we were supposed to react in a certain way because of the environment and the people around us? Both characters find it's not easy to just slip into a new life so comfortably.
But it would all fall apart if it didn't have strong actors and luckily we have John Travolta and Nicolas Cage who manage to both play twisted and psychotic for one character yet sympathetic and caring for another yet not feel disjointed when they switch places. The supporting cast also includes Gina Gershon and Alessandro Nivola on Castor's side and Joan Allen and Dominique Swain on Sean's end, even James Denton (Mike from TV's "Desperate Housewives" and comedienne Margaret Cho turn up).
Even though it does have some "Woo-isms", namely flying doves, highly-kinetic action and characters' puzzling tendency to flip and jump when in gunfights and could've done with some trimming, it's still a fun and even touching action movie.
Summary of Face/Off (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
No Description Available.Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 11-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker
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